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The Colonial Nursery

The Colonial Nursery is an interpretive and sales site featuring
18th-century garden plantings, botanical histories, historically accurate
plants and reproduction gardening tools for sale. Wesley Greene and Don
McKelvey, garden historians, are on site to answer your questions regarding
18th-century horticultural practices and the history of colonial nurserymen.
The Colonial Nursery is located on the Duke of Gloucester Street, across
from Bruton Parish Church and the sales area is open from March through
December.

Starting in March, the Colonial Nursery offers seeds for sale. The seeds represent those plants that
would have been found in the gardens of a cross section of 18th
century colonial society, and a smattering of other heirloom
varieties.

Other goods, such as the
cloche to the right, are also available for sale (at the colonial
nursery site only) and represent the colonial nursery's intent to
develop products that reflect the horticultural practices of the
past. The purpose of these cloches is to trap heat at night and
to force vegetables to bear earlier than they normally would. The
short wattle fences, here helping to keep traffic off the planting
beds, would have been used to keep small wild animals out of the
beds at night.

Our garden historians are
intent on developing an interpretive site that reflects another
angle on America's most popular hobby, gardening. Hot beds, cisterns,
cloches, and unusual pruning methods are but a couple of the topics
Wesley Greene and Donald McKelvey discuss as part of their role
as garden historians and colonial nurserymen.